The weblog of Irfan Yusuf, bush lawyer, humorist and award-winning author, once a small-c conservative but now politically left right out. His often irreverent take on things appears in some newspapers in Australia and New Zealand and online. His comic memoir "Once Were Radicals: My Years As A Teenage Islamo-fascist" was published in May 2009 and won the Iremonger Award for Public Issues Writing.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

MEDIA: BBC report on anti-Semitism in the US ...

The BBC has produced an interesting documentary on the anti-Semitic efforts of a small group of activists intent on demonising persons (often incorrectly deemend to be) of Arab extraction. Among the champions of racial and sectarian intolerance profiled are Daniel Pipes, a regular visitor to Australia hosted by right-of-centre thinktanks.

During his last visit to Australia, Pipes caused major embarrassment to one of his hosts by allowing a national broadsheet to reproduce a speech he gave to a Sydney audience. I've written about that speech here. Pipes writes:

Indigenous Europeans could resist it and, as they make up 95per cent of the continent's population, they can at any time reassert control should they see Muslims posing a threat to a valued way of life.This impulse can be seen at work in the French anti-hijab legislation or in Geert Wilders's film, Fitna. Anti-immigrant parties gain in strength; a potential nativist movement is taking shape across Europe as political parties opposed to immigration focus increasingly on Islam and Muslims. These parties include the British National Party, Belgium's Vlaamse Belang, France's National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Party for Freedom in The Netherlands and the Danish People's Party.

They are likely to continue to grow as immigration surges ever higher, with mainstream parties paying and expropriating their anti-Islamic message. Should nationalist parties gain power, they will reject multiculturalism, cut back on immigration, encourage repatriation of immigrants, support Christian institutions, increase indigenous European birthrates and broadly attempt to re-establish traditional ways.

Muslim alarm is likely to follow. US author Ralph Peters sketches a scenario in which "US Navy ships are at anchor and US marines have gone ashore at Brest, Bremerhaven or Bari to guarantee the safe evacuation of Europe's Muslims".

Peters concludes that because of Europeans' "ineradicable viciousness", the continent's Muslims "are living on borrowed time". As Europeans have "perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing", Muslims, he predicts, "will be lucky just to be deported" rather than being killed.

Indeed, Muslims worry about just such a fate; since the 1980s they have spoken overtly about Muslims being sent to gas chambers. European violence cannot be precluded, but nationalist efforts will more likely take place less violently; if anyone is likely to initiate violence, it is the Muslims.

Pipes doesn't contradict these assertions. He describes neo-fascist parties such as the British National Front as merely "political parties opposed to immigration" and mere "nationalist parties". And in a related presentation, he describes here that the chances of such a scenario happening are 47.5%

Pipes has already been exposed on this blog as falsely attributing racial remarks to an Australian Human Rights Commissioner. Instead of acknowledging his error and apologising to the Commissioner, Pipes repeated the slur.

Pipes has also been active in a hate-campaign against Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Read more about that here.

Pipes' activities in attacking a New York charter school principal have been widely reported and condemned by a number of prominent rabbis as well as other educators and academics. You can hear more about Pipes' activities in this BBC documentary entitled Soft Jihad.